Edition #165: Coping with Life's Endless To-Do List
A silly trick that works like a charm. Plus, 101 additional advices from Kevin Kelly, what artists are working on right now, and a potluck I'd actually want to attend.
A Note From the Editor
It used to be exclusively on paper. In a hardcover, spiral-bound book scattered with inspirational quotes, divider pages with doodle-like graphics pertaining to each month—a bouquet of wildflowers for April, a bucket of sand for July, a pile of leaves for October. A page of stickers no one would ever use. Jotting down entries in this handheld Bible filled me with a sense of purpose, physical proof I had Things To Do. Brunch with siblings, sorority chapter meeting, nannying in the Bahamas. Also, grocery shop, finish State and Local Government study guide, book Spring Break cruise.
When carrying around the chunky book began to feel superfluous—probably around the time my work started requiring travel—I replaced it with notebooks of the unadorned sort. Thin, undecorated, no organizational methods, no stickers. Notebooks became Post-it notes, indicative of a larger culture shift toward efficiency. I liked how the Post-it notes took up no space at all, how disposable they were. I could create a different list on each perfect yellow square. Groceries to buy. Movies to watch. Things to do on Tuesday. Long term goals. Reminders: to meditate, to pick up a Mother’s Day card, to dispute that credit card charge. I relished in the act of scribbling a line down the middle of the completed task, crumpling up the note up when the list was complete.
Then another cultural shift, from efficiency to digitized efficiency, I flirted with a new medium, iPhone Notes. Every Sunday, a new note titled Things To Do This Week with a day-by-day breakdown of tasks organized by categories: Paid Work, Creative Endeavors, Life Admin, Travel, Fun, Other. The week’s list might include upwards of thirty tasks. Forty, fifty, each command a hidden door to another thing I forgot I needed to do. Without the guardrails of school or a full-time corporate job, time is mine to structure, mine to fill. And as Parkinson’s Law suggests, the length of my to-do list expands to fill my perceived free time.
Each time I add a task to the list, a pebble is added to the pile of stones I’m lugging around on back. The stone-filled sack is manageable because I am strong and capable, so I throw another in. Something small—look into hiring a tax accountant, do breath work every morning this week, find an Airbnb for Thanksgiving, read and analyze the Past Lives script—until I am able to walk but my back aches, the soles of my feet cramp. I am likely doing permanent structural damage, though I can’t feel it just yet. Even when I dump out the bag, when the to-do list is complete, every task scribbled or ticked off, I feel its weight like a phantom limb.
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I recently got to know someone who was Always Busy. They would tell me this in voice notes and over text messages, in reply to my inquiries about how their day went, their weekend. “SO busy,” they would reply, and something in me would recoil. My reaction was physical; it lit me up with bright white irritation that surprised me in its strength.
There was a time when busyness was its own form of social currency. Unsurprising, considering the fact that every television series centering around the ultra-wealthy is characterized by its community members with full social calendars—the Kiss on the Lips Party in Gossip Girl, the Beach Ball in Palm Royale. Actors have their award shows, debutantes have their balls, socialites have their charity galas, influencers have their brand dinners. According to pop culture, a full calendar suggests a full life. But for most, busyness isn’t black tie events but dinner with friends, haircut, pilates.
When I asked my Always Busy friend what was keeping them so busy, they rattled off a list of tasks that sounded perfectly ordinary. Administrative, even, the stuff of daily life. Meditating, walking the dog, phoning their father, attending a meeting. A regular day branded a Super Busy day, the typical to-do list given heftier significance by its busy branding.
Perhaps this is my own American read of busyness, for I only claim to be busy when whatever I have going on supersedes the normalcy of daily life. I am not busy unless I am near drowning. The month when I had triple the amount of freelance projects than normal, say, or the week I spent prepping for Africa when I needed to get five shots and book a gorilla trek and order a bunch of gear and try to get an MRI and connect with my writing contacts and dig through my storage unit and do my taxes and see my friends.
I do not proclaim busyness as a fixed state; I do not find busyness glamorous or important or enviable. Being busy isn’t sexy or cool, it’s a sign of poor time management. Or, more likely, an indicator of a relentless system that allows for no breaks.
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I’ve tried embodying the inversion. The opposite of busy. No structure or strictness, taking advantage of the freedoms provided by my current freelance lifestyle. Waking up at whatever time I felt like, no hard deliverables for the end of each day except whatever paid work deadlines I had.
I can’t tell you what I did on those days, really. How I spent them. I only know the days passed as days do, and after a while I felt pretty bad about myself, despite checking menial things off my to-do list. Sure, I did a whole lot of grocery shopping and replying to emails and booking Airbnbs for future travels and taking workout classes, but I didn’t spend my time on anything that would one day make me proud—like taking my mom on a cruise or writing a new play.
Therein lies the truth of a to-do list: it is a tool, not a compass, and a tool is only as useful as its operator is knowledgeable. If my list is filled with ways I enjoy spending my time or activities that further my progress toward a goal, great. If my list is filled with menial, albeit necessary items required to maintain life, also fine. But the list in and of itself is never going to be enriching, it isn’t going to be meaning-making when I’m on my deathbed. Bowing to the list, to the chaotic sense of busyness it creates, is just another mechanism for keeping us stuck on the hamster wheel of life. One day after the next of grocery shopping and yoga and the blurred Tuesday that turns into Wednesday that turns into Monday and suddenly it’s July and another year is halfway done and you can’t recall what you had for lunch yesterday, can’t name a single task on last week’s to-list even if someone offered to pay you good money to remember.
A good trick for those times when my list is spiraling, when I’m feeling crushed beneath the weight of all the tasks I have to do today and tomorrow and forever. I ask myself what would happen if I didn’t do any of this. I’ll really let the scenario play out in my head, calculating how long I might be able to fuck off until I ended up dead or dead broke or on the streets. It’s a ridiculous exercise. By the end I am laughing at life, laughing at myself for giving a godforsaken list so much power. It’s only a list, after all. It doesn't have to be that serious.
Cheers, my dears, and as always, thanks for reading. I liked this suggestion on coping with anxiety-inducing to-do lists, and this reminder about what is and isn’t important. If you have a to-do list nearby, please snap a picture and send it to me! I’d love to see it.
Have a beautiful weekend. I’ll be heading out to the verdant wine country just outside of Cape Town. Tomorrow is a fancy dinner that comes highly recommended and Saturday is a day on the wine tram. South Africa’s wine scene is no joke, I cannot wait. Have a glass this weekend, toss out your to-do list, see a movie in theatre.
Three Pieces of Content Worth Consuming
101 Additional Advices. If you’ve been reading along for some time now, you’ve probably read one of my annual birthday editions featuring bits of unsolicited advice. That list came from one of these lists by wise man and writer Kevin Kelly. I scarf Kelly’s advice like a hungry beast, and if you read this list you’ll understand why. I want to read it 100 more times and discuss it with smart people. What’s resonating from this list right now: thinking about life in terms of the next two years, removing things from a room to make it more luxurious, and the highest form of wealth being the decision that you ave enough.
Spoiler Alert: Leftovers For Dinner. I wrote about the food-waste app Too Good To Go in this newsletter about two years ago, and it’s finally getting the big time coverage it deserves. I’ve typically used the app whilst in New York to bring a bit of joy into my day at a reasonable price—virtually impossible in NYC otherwise. The author of this piece invites friends over for dinner with the assignment of only bringing dishes procured from Too Good To Go and similar apps. A pre-trash dinner party, if you will. Funny and worth reading.
We Asked 80 Artists and Creative What They’re Starting Right Now. Wow, I loved this. A cool breadth of artists from all disciplines and of all ages. I especially appreciated how differently each artist answered the question—most citing very specific projects, but others with more ordinary feats like moving into a new place and getting rest. I deeply related to Earl Sweatshirt’s sentiment.
Perhaps You Should… Have a Fruitluck
I detest potlucks. I don’t want to fill out a spreadsheet before attending your party. I don’t want to fill my plate with four types of mismatched carbs—bread, a rice dish, pasta salad, more bread, I don’t want to eat off paper plates or carry my dirty Pyrex back home afterward. Potlucks are the lazy person’s party.
A specific dish-centered potluck, however? This can be done well, such is the case for this fruitluck. It reminds me of my favorite food influencer’s annual cookie party or of the food waste potluck mentioned in the New Yorker article above.
I harbor a farm-girl fantasy in which I become much more mellow, own a bunch of chickens and goats, and learn to grow my own food. I have all my friends over for a dinner party at golden hour and everyone brings only what they’ve grown, harvested, or brewed. There are long candles and bushels of just-picked flowers, a vintage butter dish on the table—the butter is freshly churned, obviously. That’s the only sort of potluck I want to attend.
**Bonus Content** (Wait, What?)
Am I the only one who didn't know this?
Also, writer math is real, this headline made me laugh so hard I teared up, and some much-need good news for my fellow American ladies.
A Quote From A Book You Should Read:
“What sustains in the end are doomed romances, and nicotine, and crappy peanut butter, damn the additives and cholesterol because life is finite and not all nourishment can be measured.”
-The Land of Milk and Honey by C. Pam Zhang